Advantech and Vantrix Partner to Demonstrate 4K/UHD Live HEVC Encoding for Mobile and Video Applications at MWC 2016

2/18/2016

Barcelona, Spain, February 18, 2015 – Advantech (TWSE: 2395.TW) and Vantrix today announced that the Advantech VEGA-3300 4K Live HEVC Encoding Accelerator has been integrated into the Vantrix Media Platform, bringing the benefits of low power broadcast quality HEVC live compression into high density multiscreen applications.

The H.265 High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC) is capable of reducing the bit rate required for an equivalent video quality by more than 50% from existing H.264/AVC implementations. This reduction in bit rate can bring benefits in lower network bandwidth to deliver existing services, and also can enable new services based on UltraHD (UHD/4K) resolutions which are otherwise impractical to carry on existing networks. However, software-based HEVC, particularly at high resolution and high quality, consumes up to 4 general purpose server class processors per channel, making dense implementations uneconomical.
Advantech have solved this problem by using a System-on-Chip based HEVC encoder technology on a low power PCI Express plug in card to accelerate this compression within applications such as the Vantrix Media Platform. The Advantech VEGA-3300 is a low profile, half-length PCIe card capable of performing live UHD/4K HEVC compression at up to 60 frames per second and 10 bit colour depth with only 15W power consumption. It can also process 4 individual channels of live FullHD (1080p60) or, later in 2016, 8 channels of live HD (720p60) in the same small package. As a low-profile PCI Express card, it is simple to integrate multiple cards into many standard server architectures.

“The powerful combination of Advantech and Vantrix technology brings more efficient broadcast quality HEVC live encoding to deliver the highest density of 4K media processing on the Vantrix Media Platform”, said Brian Carr, Strategic ProductDevelopment and Marketing Director for Advantech. “The physically small and low power nature of our product lends itself well to scalable mobile and multiscreen applications and you will see more exciting announcements about higher density options later in 2016.”

“We are particularly impressed by the ability to handle 4K live HEVC encoding in such a small, low power package”, said Jean Mayrand, President and CEO of Vantrix. “In addition to the multiscreen, mobile optimization and broadcast delivery applications supported by the Vantrix Media Platform, this technology enables some of our new and exciting immersive 360-degree Virtual Reality experiences to be delivered to mobiledevices.” Advantech and Vantrix will be demonstrating the capabilities of the new platform in Advantch’s meeting room at Mobile World Congress in Hall #5 5L16MR. To reserve a meeting please email video.solutions@advantech.com.

The VEGA-3300 was previously known as HVC-8700 and is available immediately.